How much does the test cost? It depends — here is exactly on what.

The four costs, separated

1. The test itself — per subject (GED, 4 subjects) or per subtest (HiSET, 5), and the price can differ between a test center and online inside the same state (Texas: $36.25 center, $42.25 online).
2. The official practice test — $7.99 per subject, $25.99 for all four (checked October 2026 at the official door). It is also the online gate: no green practice score, no online seat.
3. The retake exposure — the cost of a bad day. One discounted center retake per GED subject (the $26 test-maker fee waived); HiSET includes two retakes per subtest in the first year. Your state's worst case is computed on its page.
4. The record — years later, the paper that proves you passed costs a document fee at the custodian's door, where one is published (Massachusetts and Florida: $20; Maryland: $15).

The free and near-free states

New York charges the examinee nothing, for the test or retakes. Maine's HiSET is free for residents. West Virginia testing runs free through its adult-education route. Arkansas's $4 center price is the lowest paid price in the dataset — while its online price is the unsubsidized $36, which is why 'cheapest mode' is a real question the checker answers per state.

Why we flag some prices

Some per-subject prices live behind the test maker's account pages and could not be confirmed on a public official page in our 2026-10-20 pass. Those cells are flagged unverified — check the official page wherever they appear — {UNVERIFIED_TOTAL} flags site-wide — rather than repeated as fact. The farm sites that copy each other's tables are how wrong prices live forever; the flags are how ours die on schedule.